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Seven years ago, Ryan Murphy produced the first season of FEUD, about famous feuds between famous people. That first season, which was about the long-discussed rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, was a hit despite the fact that almost every person being portrayed had been dead for decades. Surprisingly, there hasn’t been a new story for Murphy to sink his teeth into until now.
FEUD: CAPOTE VS. THE SWANS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Author Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) walks out to a lake and looks at the swans swimming around. The year is 1984. He observes the beauty, but zeroes in on a black swan among the white ones.
The Gist: “1968.” Capote walks into an upscale building on the Upper West Side. He’s there to visit his friend Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), who seems to have suffered the final indignity from her husband, CBS chairman Bill Paley (Treat Williams). He’s constantly having affairs, and this time, a tryst with Happy Rockefeller (Rebecca Creskoff) ended with her bleeding all over their bedroom; Happy purposely did not tell Bill she was on her period. Capote consoles her but tells her not to talk to anyone about this and not to get a divorce; in his view, her lavish life as a New York society wife is far better than being a sad divorcee languishing in Westchester.
“1955.” Bill and Babe Paley meet Capote for the first time when David O. Selznick (Scott Zimmerman) invites the author on a trip to Montego Bay the Paleys and Selznicks are going on. Paley is under the mistaken impression that the “Truman” Selznick talks about is the former president, but both he and Babe are immediately delighted by Capote’s flamboyant forthrightness and his ability to spin a great story.
During a dinner party in Montego Bay, Capote talks about a story he’s working on, about the accidental shooting of Woody Woodward Jr. by his wife, Ann Woodward (Demi Moore). He suspects that she actually killed him deliberately, and Woody’s influential family covered the death up.
“1975.” Capote is suffering from writer’s block, and his partner, Jack Dunphy (Joe Mantello), is concerned about the amount of drinking Capote is doing. Capote goes to a Turkish bath and meets John O’Shea (Russell Tovey), a bank executive from Long Island. Despite being married with kids, O’Shea, a self-described “sexual sociopath.” He eventually makes O’Shea his manager.
He takes O’Shea to a lunch with members of a group of society women he calls “the Swans.” Babe Paley is one of them, as is Slim Keith (Diane Lane) and C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny). As they gossip about all of the dirt in their own lives and the lives of other society couples, the three women advise Capote to dump O’Shea. At the same time, Ann Woodward sees Capote and confronts him about the stories about her husband’s death he’s been spreading around their mutual group of friends for the past two decades.
O’Shea suggests to Capote that he should write about the Swans and the goings-on in their group. In November, “La Côte Basque 1965”, an excerpt of Capote’s new novel, comes out in Esquire, which is a thinly-veiled roman a clef about the Swans and their lives. It’s so scandalous, it prompts Ann Woodward to kill herself. Of course Babe Paley and the other Swans feel betrayed by Capote, and Slim Keith is the first to voice the idea of getting revenge.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This is the second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud anthology series, the first since the 2017 series about the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. This time around, the show is written by Jon Robin Baitz based on Laurence Leamer’s book (Capote’s Women: A True Story About Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song For An Era) about the rivalry between Capote and the Swans. Gus Van Sant, also an executive producer (along with Murphy and Watts), directs most of the episodes. There will also be inevitable comparisons to the 2005 film Capote, where the late Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for playing the author.
Our Take: Our initial thought after watching the first episode of Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans was wondering just who would care about this dispute between these long-dead wealthy women and this long-dead famous author. But the first chapter of Feud was a hit, despite the fact that the rivalry between Davis and Crawford happened over a half-century prior.
But something about this story felt different. The tagline for this series is “The Original Housewives,” and that feels like the level of drama we’re getting here. Capote knows about all the dirt in the Swans’ lives, uses it to further his career at a particularly low point, and pays the social price for it. That’s the whole story.
Sure, it might be fun to see the Swans destroy Capote’s social standing as the limited series goes along. And, of course, watching the stellar cast — we haven’t even mentioned Calista Flockhart as Lee Radzwill and Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson — sink their teeth into the roles of these powerful, vengeful women will yield some interesting, scene-chewing moments. But the story itself feels like one of those Real Housewives arguments over someone not inviting someone else for a dinner party: Fun to watch but ultimately small dramatic potatoes.
Since the first episode centered more on Capote than the Swans, we got a good look at Hollander’s version of the noted author. Hoffman set the standard almost two decades ago, playing up the more flamboyant aspects of Capote’s manner and personality without making it seem like an impression. We’re not sure if Hollander’s portrayal is going to rise to that. Sure, he has the mannerisms and the voice down, but the Capote of the first episode is a man of extremes. He’s either the raconteur who can fixate a group of people on his storytelling, or he’s spiraling into self-hate over the fact that “Truman Capote” has become a character he no longer can fully control.
In other words, Hollander’s performance has yet to show any subtlety or modulation. But that may be more a product of the material than anything else. And as the story continues to move back and forth in time, where we see Capote’s friendship with the Swans develop then get torn apart, we may see more of the nuance we’re looking for.
Sex and Skin: Bill Paley and Happy Rockefeller are shown having sex, before Paley realizes that Happy was on her period and didn’t tell him.
Parting Shot: Back at the lake in 1984. A chastened Capote examines the swans and takes a drag from his cigarette.
Sleeper Star: We were happy and sad to see Treat Williams as Billy Paley; as far as we know, this is his last screen role. And considering we generally see Russell Tovey as either a cop or criminal in various British dramas, seeing him as a sexually voracious American bank executive was refreshing.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Capote tells the story about Ann “Bang Bang” Woodward to the dinner party in Montego Bay, he tells Paley, “Bill, you should tell your boys over at 60 Minutes, because it’s a killer story.” One problem: 60 Minutes premiered in 1968, 13 years after that scene took place. Errors like that drive us crazy, because they could be easily avoided with a five-second Google search.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re hopeful that Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans will provide some juicy scenes among its amazing cast, and that will be enough to keep us watching. But the story itself is so low-stakes that it just leaves us cold.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
